Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday June 09, 2014 @11:58AM
from the read-all-about-it dept.

A while ago you had the chance to ask amateur scientist, and author of the Getting Started in Electronics and the Engineer's Mini-Notebook series, Forrest Mims, a number of questions about science, engineering, and a lifetime of educating and experimenting. Below you'll find his detailed answers to those questions.

inspirations
by lyapunov

You are the quintessential tinkerer with a non-standard education. What was the key inspiration that started you on this path? What do you feel provides the most inspiration in others, in particular kids, to learn and do hands on tasks?

Mims: Give kids a lab or robotics kit and watch their curiosity and creativity explode. Glue them to chairs in a classroom and watch them grow bored and disillusioned as their curiosity dissipates.

My dad was a US Air Force pilot as well as an artist and architect. He definitely encouraged curiosity, especially when he built a beautiful crystal radio set for my brother and me. During two 6th grade assemblies a visiting physicist and an Air Force meteorologist conducted fascinating demonstrations of cryogenics and weather balloons. As a teenager I read everything I could about transistor circuits in Popular Mechanics and Popular Electronics and “The Amateur Scientist” column in Scientific American. I even dreamed of someday writing for those magazines. An article in the July 1954 issue of National Geographic (“New Miracles of the Telephone Age”) included absolutely mesmerizing photos of transistors and silicon solar cells. Over the years hundreds of emails and letters have arrived from readers of my books who reported they were inspired as teenagers or young adults to enter electronics or science because of them. That was completely unexpected, for writing those books was just a part of my electronics hobby. So it seems that inspiration often begins at a very early age.

But young people don’t have an exclusive monopoly on exciting discoveries and projects. What can be more amazing than the molecular motors that walk along microtubules in our cells while towing huge loads? Then there’s my new project of using ultra-sensitive, homemade photometers to measure the brightness of the zenith sky during twilight to extract the altitude of atmospheric dust layers and the ozone layer. This is the most exciting science I’ve done in 20 years!

Re:No Question by B1ackDragon

...I also have "Getting Started in Electronics" and a couple of "Engineer's Mini-Notebooks" still on my shelf, with the intention of giving them to my kids one day. Question for Mr. Mims: what was it like getting a completely handwritten book published? Did you approach RadioShack with the idea? Given all the modern publication options (self-pub, iBooks, etc.) and software to help, how would you go about it today? (I know, that's three questions...)

Mims: Interesting question. David Gunzel was Radio Shack’s technical editor back in 1978. Back then he sometimes agreed to witness pages in my lab notebooks, which were all hand printed and illustrated. One day Dave said that I should do a hand-lettered book for Radio Shack, so it was his idea. The result was Engineer’s Notebook, which sold more than 600,000 copies. This book was printed on toothed (roughened) Mylar with India ink—which meant entire pages had to be redone when a mistake was made. The middle finger of my right hand bled while printing this book. All 15 or so subsequent hand-lettered books were printed with a 0.7-mm mechanical pencil on stiff stock. This allowed errors to be easily erased and corrected. The Mini-Notebook series (all 16 volumes now merged into four) was prepared on paper, as was Getting Started in Electronics, which was completely planned, printed and drawn in 54 days, including rebuilding and testing every one of the 100 circuits four times to make sure there were zero errors. (It’s essential to rebuild circuits from the circuit drawings and not from memory!) Getting Started in Electronics has sold 1.3+ million copies and is still in print.

What book are you most proud of?by TheBrez

What single book are you the most proud of, and see as your best work? Or which one have you had the most people tell you was the book they use/recommend the most?

Mims:Getting Started in Electronics remains my favorite book and still brings in many comments online and in emails. Science Projects, a Mini-Notebook, is a close second. From a scholarly perspective, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory: Fifty Years of Monitoring the Atmosphere was by far my most ambitious work. This book was four years in the making and was based on my many stays at Mauna Loa Observatory (1992 to present) to calibrate my atmospheric monitoring instruments.

Model Rocketry by Anonymous Coward

Please retell the story of how you got started in Model Rocketry and some of your earlier projects, successes, and of course failures. Be sure to name names and clubs!

Mims: Great question! I’ve devoted space to this topic in a new memoir now being written. It all began way back in 1967 in Colorado Springs when my dad took me to a model rocket meeting staged by what became Estes Industries. For Christmas that year I received an Aerobee-Hi rocket kit. The rocket was quickly built and reached an altitude of 671 feet on its first flight. Before we moved to Colorado, where my dad was assigned as project officer for the Air Force Academy Chapel, I was seated in a hot seventh-grade classroom at Hamilton Junior High School watching a big fan by the door when the idea of a ram-air controlled rocket popped into my mind. The idea was a rocket that was steered not by fins but by air entering the open nose of a rocket and then jetted out ports in the nose cone. This project dominated my experimenting for several years, and its successes and failures will be covered in detail in the new memoir. The major success was confirmation that the ram air principle actually worked during test flights. The biggest failure was that the best made sun-homing test rocket control section worked great—but failed miserably during ground tests (suspended from a string looking at a flashlight) when the ram air scanner rapidly stopped during a course change and its inertia caused the entire rocket to spin.

The ram air project involved many test flights, and night flights were best since the rocket path could be easily recorded on film. To recover these rockets, I built a very small 2-transistor light flasher (which I still have). When I demonstrated the flasher during a night launch at a model rocket meeting in Portales, New Mexico, in 1969, George Flynn, editor of Model Rocketry magazine, asked me to write an article about its construction. I build a new flasher for the article, which was published in September 1969. I was very surprised when Flynn sent a check for $93.50 for the article. I told my wife Minnie that I wanted to become a freelance writer and showed my friend Ed Roberts the article. Ed and I were both assigned to the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM, at the time, and we often discussed forming a company to sell electronic kits through Popular Electronics and Radio-Electronics magazines. When Ed saw the article in Model Rocketry, he agreed it was time to start a company. We invited Stan Cagle and Bob Zaller to join us in a meeting at Ed’s house, where we decided to call the company Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). You can read the details on my web site. Our first product was my light flasher circuit. I left both MITS and the Air Force after a year or so to become a freelance writer but stayed connected by writing manuals for various MITS products. I also arranged a meeting with Ed and Les Solomon of Popular Electronics when Les came to visit my wife Minnie and me. That meeting led to the Opticom article (a MITS light-wave communication system), various calculator articles and finally a cover story in January 1975 on the MITS Altair 8800, a microcomputer designed by Ed. The Altair was featured on the cover, which attracted Paul Allen’s attention. He bought the magazine in a Harvard Square news store and immediately took it to his high school friend Bill Gates. Within months, Paul was working at MITS, and Bill followed later. They organized Microsoft shortly thereafter. Paul Allen planned a great exhibit on the early days of microcomputing, which began in Albuquerque, not the West Coast. The exhibit is called STARTUP. It occupies an entire gallery at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque. On display are the first BASIC tape, early computer stuff, and the light flasher (and rocket) I built for Model Rocketry magazine.

projects
by Anonymous Coward

Of all the projects you have worked on, what has been your favorite? Personal or professional. (I would like to express my gratitude, getting started with electronics, got me started in electronics and I am now an engineer. I also have a "non-standard" education as they say, having mostly taught myself from reading and taking online free courses.

Mims: First, I’m glad you are largely self-taught. That’s often the best way.

Favorite Projects:

1. 1966-72: Various electronic travel aids for the blind, a project inspired by my blind great grandfather. The 2-transistor pulse generator for the LED was based on a $0.99 code practice oscillator board from a radio/TV repair shop when I was in college (spring 1966). That oscillator circuit dominated my learning curve for several years and evolved into the rocket light flasher that led to the founding of MITS.

2. 1990-Present: First sun photometers to use LEDs as spectrally selective photodiodes (still very involved with this after 25 years of near daily measurements).

3. 1990-Present: Compact 2-channel UV-B photometer for measuring the ozone layer to within 1-2% accuracy. The original two instruments (TOPS-1 and 2) found an error in NASA’s Nimbus 7 ozone instrument and led to my first publication in Nature. This work led to a 1993 Rolex Award. TOPS evolved into Microtops II, a sophisticated instrument engineered by Solar Light that’s used around the world to monitor the ozone layer, total water vapor and haze.

4. 2013-Present: Miniature photometers that measure twilight glows and enable the detection and elevation of stratospheric dust layers and the ozone layer. This is really exciting work and I will soon be comparing results from my homemade instruments with two lidars at the Mauna Loa Observatory.

a distinguished tinkerer, indeed
by swschrad

I grew up on your Popular Electronics crew, all those soldering wizards who educated us all. I'd like to hear the back-story of how you and AT&T got into a cage battle over optoelectronics

Mims: The Bell Labs story is told in Siliconnections and will be retold with new info in the new memoir. During my senior year in high school I reasoned that a solid state light detector should also function as a light source, much as an electromagnetic earphone could double as a microphone. Briefly, I connected an automobile spark coil to a CdS photocell—which emitted flashes of green light when stimulated by 12,000 volts from the coil. In 1972 I experimented with LEDs as photodiodes and described this in a book (Light Emitting Diodes, pp. 118-119). In the early 1980s I sent Bell Labs an invention disclosure for how an LED can be used as 2-way emitter/detector at either end of an optical fiber. They agreed in writing to contact me if they wanted to pursue my disclosure, but they never did. A few years later, Dave Gunzel, Radio Shack’s tech editor, sent me a Business Week article that announced Bell Labs had discovered what I submitted to them. I made 2 trips to New York to negotiate with them, but they wanted me to do work for them in return for me canceling my claim. In the end, I visited a sharp patent lawyer, and we sued. After a series of funny depositions and other adventures, the well-known Texas trial lawyer Bell Labs had hired told them they needed to settle the case. They did. They also abandoned a patent application they had filed (after I complained to a Federal judge).

Re:Ask him about Darwinby femtobyte

Why do you trust science when it comes to electronics, but not when it comes to biology?

Mims: I trusted biology in the 6th grade when our science book showed a photo of Piltdown Man and explained how he was the missing link between apes and people. This book persuaded me to accept evolution and to almost reject Christianity. However, while researching Piltdown Man at an Air Force Academy library when I was in the 11th grade, I learned that the 1912 discovery was actually one of science’s biggest hoaxes. Even though some scientists never accepted Piltdown as authentic, the scientific consensus was that it was real, and this admission was not formalized for 40 years. That was three years before my sixth grade science book was handed to us gullible students and presented as scientific fact. While working with scientists at the Air Force Weapons Lab on a variety of sophisticated experiments involving rhesus monkeys, I decided to look more into evolution. I began collecting fossils and have since accumulated a fair number of insects encapsulated in ancient amber. By my mid-twenties, I made the conscious decision to reject Darwinian evolution in favor of what is now called intelligent design. (I prefer Superintelligent Design. ID is a misnomer, since no one has proposed the details of exactly how life has been intelligently designed ex nihilo.)
The bottom line for me was that Piltdown taught me to be skeptical of scientific paradigms. Of course, that’s what science in general once taught. But these days we are supposed to accept anything that’s claimed to be the product of “scientific consensus.”

Back to your question, yes, I certainly trust science when it comes to electronics and biology. In fact, I’ve merged electronics and biology in a long term and ongoing study of daily photosynthetic radiation. I published a paper on 5-years of data using a homemade instrument in Photochemistry and Photobiology. Evolutionary science offers no viable explanation for the evolution of photosynthesis. I’ve also merged electronics and biology in an ongoing study of selective tannin deposition in the annual growth rings of various trees, especially two distinctive varieties of baldcypress (Taxodium distichum).

But I question paradigms and never trust pseudoscience, like the idea that life arose on its own through purely random processes. Occam’s razor recommends the simplest solution to a problem as being the best. Intentional design of living systems—the God hypothesis in my view, others have different ideas--is a far simpler explanation than random natural processes that have never been observed to create molecular motors and other absolutely indispensable elements of living cells. Back to electronics, it’s easy to conceive of an application, but implementing a circuit to implement the application is not a random process. I’ve built thousands of circuits, none of which were made by randomly wiring together components. The same applies to code. No one I know has ever randomly poked keys on a keyboard in an effort to create a new routine. In medicine, random events like this are called mutations, the vast majority of which are non-beneficial. When I designed the PIP processor from discrete TTL chips, it was necessary to design both the circuit and the microinstructions. PIP was built on our kitchen table, and was a bird’s nest of wires. Remove or replace a single wire or randomly change a microinstruction, and it would not work. But I was careful, and it worked. I published a book and 4 articles based on PIP, not one connection of which was random. In fact, as the designer of that rather difficult project, I might have been somewhat offended had someone suggested I relied on random processes for any aspect of its design and/or assembly. ; )

I apply these same standards to all science, so let’s briefly examine evolution.

1. RANDOM EVOLUTION. The random processes thought to underlie evolution occur throughout nature. I’ve built a Geiger counter to record the random arrival of subatomic particles, and I once wrote a program to quickly evaluate “random number generators” by plotting them as x,y coordinates. Imperfect generators were quickly revealed when their numbers formed streaks and bands across the screen. But I am unaware of how naturally random processes could have led to the first life forms, much less the information encoded within them. Consider the earliest cyanobacteria from the Precambrian. These ancient life forms were capable of cell division, and they included complex information that controlled their structure, metabolism and reproduction. Modern single-celled organisms multiply by various forms of division. In all cases, various molecular motors physically split and move the internal structures of the dividing cell, sometimes under great pressure. Consider kinesin motors that literally walk along internal microtubules towing huge loads. These motors are too small to image (they walk 8 nm per step at up to 100 steps/second), but Ron Vale’s team at the University of California at San Francisco has managed to affix glowing quantum dots to them so their movements can be observed in real time. There are many other kinds of molecular motors, including the sliders in muscle tissue and the rotary motors that drive flagella and perform amazing internal functions much like machines in a factory.

The evolution of these complex molecules, which had to exist in the earliest cells, is so improbable that the evolutionary literature is being increasingly criticized for failing to include evolutionary explanations for them. That’s a huge problem for evolutionary molecular biologists, some of whom I know. Do they really believe that a rotary nanomotor that spins an axle at a thousand or so rpm and can stop in only a revolution—all at an efficiency approaching 100 percent—somehow randomly arose from a cluster of molecules hanging out in a protocell? Do they really believe these motors can walk, slide and rotate while performing many functions absolutely essential to the life of a cell—all without a nervous system, brain, eyes or muscles? Ron Vale’s team, Harvard, the Discovery Institute and others have produced remarkable videos that show animations of molecular motors. Before committing yourself to the notion these highly complex machines evolved, have a look at some of their videos on YouTube and start asking questions. You will immediately realize why molecular biologists avoid discussing the supposed evolution of these nanomachines.

2. DARWIN. Moving on to higher forms of life, all of which rely on molecular motors, Darwin knew nothing about DNA, molecular motors and the self-assembling microtubules that support cell structures and serve as tracks for walking kinesin motors when he proposed his hypothesis of natural selection. Natural selection works great at macro levels. That’s why people have been able to select special characteristics of plants and animals to develop new varieties. But even dogs (Canis familiaris) can reproduce with their key predecessors (Canis lupis). Dogs have never evolved into anything other than dogs.

3. DARWIN’S ESCAPE CLAUSE. Charles Darwin injected a vital escape clause into his famous The Origin of Species when he recognized the absence of any fossils that transitioned into the remarkably diverse and complex creatures found in the Cambrian. Darwin wrote, “There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks.To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.”

Today’s strict evolutionists are unhappy about Darwin’s views, for even today he would be unable to provide a satisfactory explanation. Thanks to Darwin for advocating the skeptical side of science, a side that is too often ignored or even banished when philosophical matters intervene. And that’s the final line. Ever since I was banished from Scientific American magazine after the editors asked if I believe in Darwinian evolution (no) or the sanctity of life (yes), a small number of dedicated atheists have attempted to discredit both me and my science. I know Christians who accept Darwinian evolution and those who do not. But hardline atheists have no choice but to resist any alternatives to evolution. This hasn’t impressed my editors, publishers, science colleagues and, yes, the atheist friends and colleagues with whom I have done considerable science. There just happen to be some determined atheists out there who seem to have a calling to flame anyone who rejects their philosophy in favor of a higher power or, more perhaps more appropriately in my case, a Creator. Your question doesn’t use that approach, and I appreciate that.

Makerspacesby cowtamer

What do you feel about the Maker movement and Makerspaces in general?It seems to me as the Maker/tinkerer is the new equivalent to the electronics hobbyist. Do you believe new project designs need to keep this in mind? (i.e, present the design of an entire gadget instead of just the electronics)?

Mims: Fantastic question! Hobby electronics experienced a sharp reversal when it worked its way out of a hobby by evolving (under the lead of designers, of course) into commercially available computers. This was a major concern to many of us who judged science fairs. Physics and engineering experiments nearly disappeared while soft projects in environmental science multiplied.

Two developments have reversed the decline of hobby electronics:

1. ROBOTICS: The robotics movement has transformed many students from passive learners to active experimenters and designers. My current column in MAKE magazine proposes a new kind of robotics competition in which “Marsbots” slip behind a curtain to a scene visible only to spectators and perform a variety of tests of a simulated Martian environment and atmosphere. If this becomes a competition someday, students will learn many new concepts in math, electronics, mechanics, environmental sensing and monitoring, data analysis, and, of course, robotics. They will do all this in one major project while having loads of fun!

2. MAKER MOVEMENT: There’s always been a maker movement. It began with hand-woven baskets and hand-chipped flints. Today’s maker movement really took off when MAKE magazine arrived and began publishing projects that people were doing all along in private. Thanks to the highly creative team at MAKE, the movement has expanded well beyond what it once was.

You asked a key question: [Should we] present the design of an entire gadget instead of just the electronics? I think of it this way:

a. Present any circuit that does something useful, whether or not you have found what that use might be.
b. Present complete circuits that do something useful whenever possible.c. Share your talents and aspirations by merging them into practical, useful projects.
d. Publish your projects! Nuts&Volts is a fantastic electronics magazine. MAKE is the ultimate maker’s magazine. If you make a scientific discovery submit your work to a scientific journal. If it’s published, you will have more credibility than ever before.

Doing electronics alone is fun, but it’s not always creative. I found my niche by using electronics to develop entirely new kinds of gadgets and instruments—like an oscilloscope the size of a postage stamp, a surface-mount organ assembled with conductive paint on a business card, and a stepped-tone generator that was renamed the “Atari Punk Console.” (I had no idea how much influence the latter circuit had until being asked to give a talk at Moogfest 2014. Search Google for more.)

Then there’s added value, as I’m trying to do with a range of compact, inexpensive instruments designed to monitor the atmosphere’s ozone layer, water vapor layer, haze and so forth. Some of these instruments use ordinary LEDs as spectrally-selective photodiodes instead of expensive filters.

Challenges faced by computer-aided learning by LordMyren

You've written hobbyist-targetting books with Radio Shack that work through hands on projects hobbyists can do themselves. My question is, for those seeking to carry your mission in writing those books over to computer-aided or simulation based learning, what things of value did you create that will be the hardest to carry forwards and what are the greatest things of value that computer-assistance will uniquely be able to take & make it's own & go furthest with?

Mims: This is a tough questions. The Radio Shack books are really best for hands-on learning. I saw this firsthand while teaching basic electronics and experimental science to humanities majors at the University of the Nations in Hawaii and Switzerland. The students are from all over the world, and they all exhibited the same response, viz., lectures about science and electronics are boring at best, even when supplemented with cool videos and PowerPoints. But hands on learning is exciting and contagious. When students were given my Electronics Learning Lab one never knew what to expect. They were at first timid. But after 5 minutes they were building their first circuits. One class became so excited—and loud--while building light-sensitive tone generators that the classes on either side of mine gave up and walked in my class to see what was happening. Check out my YouTube video of a typical reaction of two students building a tone generator.

I will think more about your question, for there’s certainly a role for computer assisted learning. But based on many years of experience, I’m biased toward the hands-on approach.

Past vs present
by ArcadeMan

What's your opinion on the old ways, i.e. buying parts locally from Radio Shack and meeting people in local clubs compared to the new online way of buying parts and kits, publishing tutorials and forums full of people helping each other?More to the point, what do you think has been lost from the old way and what has been gained from the new way?

Mims: This is an intriguing question. While I was never a member of an electronics club, I know some people who were. I also spent time showing friends how to build circuits. I doubt if there’s a better way to learn to solder than watching an experienced person solder a connection. That’s how I taught my son Eric to solder when he was only four years old. About that time I organized the Albuquerque Academy Model Rocket and taught teens how to make rockets, design experiments and build instruments. Yes, maybe some of this firsthand instruction has been lost these days. But maybe robotics clubs and groups have brought back much of it. If asked to trade, I would take today’s approach of do-it-yourself electronics over the old days. Moving on to science, I really think the old method was better. Science today is dominated by labs filled with teams, often working with very costly equipment. Today’s amateur scientists have access to highly sophisticated equipment on the surplus market, so that’s a major advance. But it’s often difficult for even highly creative amateur scientists to win the recognition they deserve unless they publish in leading journals of science, the most difficult kind of publishing on the planet.

They're exactly like mims.They know 1 thing, apply it to things outside of their field and make nonsense statements.

What Jenny McCarthy is to vaccines he is to the theory of evolution.

Jenny McCarthy is indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe even thousands of Children. She's peer pressured mothers all over the world into putting their children in mortal danger. Mims gave a few speeches in front of like minded Christians and wrote a few papers. I've never though that if I sat down to dinner with him and disagreed that he'd bat an eye at it. Jenny McCarthy would probably leap across the table and throttle you if she found out you vaccinated your kids. The two are not even

Both promote ignorance of a science. Both undermine science, both speak on subjects they no nothing about.Intentional undermining a science, using your status to continue to spread ignorance harms us all.Not understand science becasue of people like these ass hats is exactly why kids are dead.

His 'logic' is the same type of 'logic' that makes people susceptible to claims from people like Jenny McCarthy, and a host of other pseudosciences.

Both promote ignorance of a science. Both undermine science, both speak on subjects they no nothing about.Intentional undermining a science, using your status to continue to spread ignorance harms us all.Not understand science becasue of people like these ass hats is exactly why kids are dead.

His 'logic' is the same type of 'logic' that makes people susceptible to claims from people like Jenny McCarthy, and a host of other pseudosciences.

Scientific ignorance puts us all in mortal peril.

So do you. So do I. I'm sure I could trawl your posts and find some examples of you disagreeing with established science, not that I care to.By that reasoning we're all equally related to Jenny McCarthy.McCarthy is a bad person because she uses peer pressure to convince unwitting mothers into putting children in very real danger. She's made a fortune doing so. Mims simply has a different opinion. I see nothing wrong with that even if I disagree with him.

I recently got into a debate with Geekoid about crime statistics. By the end of it, I'd won pretty handily, and it was clear he was cherry picking data.

I didn't think it would come up again, but here it has, and as it turns out, you're exactly right - Geekoid engaged in selective comprehension of data to fit his emotional need to support preconceived and wrong beliefs.

That said, I agree with you that there is nothing threatening about finding science compelling to a point, and then thinking that while the

This guy has read Origin of Species (have you?) and he knows about piltdown man, which means he knows a fair bit about both archaeology and biology, far more than your average playboy bunny. He's also excellent at circuit design and technical writing, so he thinks clearly and analytically. On all fronts, he is somebody who is at least capable of intelligent discourse on the matter, probably to the same degree as you or I, and the fact that he holds a minority position doesn't make his ideas worthless.

Dawkins is an expert in biology, but woefully uninformed about theology/philosophy - he presents many arguments that are centuries old, and expects to be celebrated for it. So it would be appropriate to say he and many of his proponents "know 1 thing, apply it to things outside of their field and make nonsense statements."

An "expert" in theology?:) Is that like knowing what color the invisible unicorn is without looking it up? Or being able to count how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?

No, it's actually about being well read in a philosophical tradition that extends back many centuries and includes a great number of names that you'll recognize for their contributions to science and mathematics. Leibniz, Descartes and Pascal are just a few that come to mind. Regardless of what your position is on theism, it's a central part of philosophy and always has been. Many interesting questions have been explored primarily through the perspective of theology - questions about the universe and why it

I only knew Mims through his electronics books. I had no idea he was skeptical of evolution. It's interesting to show an example of someone who is clearly scientifically literate, yet still has room in his belief system for God, and also sees cracks in accepted theory. How many "independent" thinkers do we have in my generation? Whenever I say things like Mims said here, I'm mocked (openly or silently). I think something's lost for that.

" sees cracks in accepted theory."you don't understand science, do you?That statement makes no sense at all.It's a theory, are there unknowns? of course, just like every theory.Does the current data support the theory? yes.You can not be scientifically literate and not know the theory of evolution is based on facts.The idea the the theory of evolution means there isn't a god is wrong.The idea that atheist 'have to believe' in the current theory of evolution no matter what is also wrong. Give another reason that explains the current data, as well as make predictions.Yes, evolution makes predictions and yes they have panned out.

First, Mims cites witnessing an example of the self-corrective mechanism of science in action as a reason to reject it. How does that even make sense? The whole of science is built on that principle in the first place! Second, claiming that "the God hypothesis is a simpler explanation" doesn't make any sense either. So we explain away the existence of complex sentient entities (us) by assuming the existence of another complex sentient entity? In what sense is this not merely postponing the problem? The rest is a bunch of arguments from incredulity and ignorance ("I don't know how it could have happened, so it didn't happen!")

the simplest answer is that some unknown intelligent agent guided the design of it.

No, not at all. Because rather than reducing the difficulty of the problem, you now have the increased difficulty of explaining the origin of the unknown intelligent agent. You've gone a step backwards.

Sorry I wasn't clear in that post. Whenever I ask about the origin of the Big Bang, the answer I get back is some variant of "It doesn't matter."

I don't ask religious people about the origin of God, because that's not an important point of their belief. And since I am not religious myself, I'm not that interested. I am interested in scientific thought, and am constantly disappointed by this one point.

No, not at all. Because rather than reducing the difficulty of the problem, you now have the increased difficulty of explaining the origin of the unknown intelligent agent. You've gone a step backwards.

Occam's Razor is about finding the most plausible answer. If the most plausible answer is "intelligent design", then Occam's Razor applies. True, you now have a new problem to solve, but that doesn't mean you can just discount the first step. As an example, intelligent design is the kind of thing we're looking for in the search for extraterrestrial life.

That said, I'm an atheist and believe the evidence is very much in favor of random, natural evolution over intelligent design.

Who told you that? It's about finding the simplest answer that will suffice. If the evidence points to things being more complicated, you need a more complicated explanation. It has nothing to do with plausibility.

You're definition is the correct one, of course, but to say it has nothing to do with plausibility is incorrect. What is found plausible or implausible is often based on the complexity of the explanation.

It's implied from his background - he is a Christian - and his use of religious terms like "sanctity of life." The main logical fallacy in his theological position is that his god is a god of the gaps. He is using gaps in evidence for the prevailing theory to "prove" that it's wrong. I don't know personally, but I wouldn't be surprised or dismayed if there is still a "missing link" in the fossil record that tells us how single-celled organisms evolved certain relatively complex things like flagella. The lack of evidence is not evidence to the contrary, so I am content to wait until further science sheds light on the matter. But the fact that we aren't sure how life got started doesn't throw the rest of Evolutionary Theory away. The fact that the Piltdown Man was a hoax doesn't either. Wikipedia has a fascinating series of articles on evolutionary biology, but here's a good place to start [wikipedia.org].

Also, as GP implied, jumping from "intelligent designer" to the benevolent and omnipotent Christian god just does not follow from "there are issues with Evolutionary Theory." There is no logical connection between the two, and his use of Occam's Razor only makes sense to those who take it as a given that there are extradimensional beings of unimaginable power. A biologist using Occam's Razor would instead extrapolate from observed processes like natural selection, and then look for evidence (which is exactly what we've done with Evolutionary Theory, and it has worked out pretty well so far).

Also, as GP implied, jumping from "intelligent designer" to the benevolent and omnipotent Christian god just does not follow from "there are issues with Evolutionary Theory."

I didn't mean to imply that, though I can see why you might assume it. I was more interested in pointing out that I appreciated seeing someone who has a science and engineering background feel free to engage in thinking beyond that which is accepted in those circles.

"..l free to engage in thinking beyond that which is accepted in those circles."unless he can actually get some evidence that adds to what is already known., he isn't thinking beyond anything. Just spouting nonsense.

"..l free to engage in thinking beyond that which is accepted in those circles."
unless he can actually get some evidence that adds to what is already known., he isn't thinking beyond anything. Just spouting nonsense.

Because there's no value in considering or thinking about anything for which empirical data doesn't exist? This concept goes broadly beyond evolution. In fact, if you believe in the mathematical concept of a circle, or a square - you have established belief in something for which no physical evidence exists. There are no perfect circles or squares in the world. Only in pure thought do such things exist. And the understanding of mathematics that we use to describe them had to come about without perfect or pr

Approximate squares and circles exist, from which the qualities of theoretical perfect ones may be extrapolated.

There was a terrible attempt to prove the existence of God in this manner by St. Anselm. It was something along the lines of "if the idea of a perfect God exists, then the idea must come from a better source, and the better source would be a perfect God". I thought that rather silly myself, as there is nothing about the idea of a perfect God which requires anything better than a human.

That said, the leap from the observable universe to the Big Bang is remarkable. I cannot conceive of how cosmologists and

Constant review and scrutiny is supposed to be part of science. The successes of hoaxes like the Lysenko affair, the kinase cascade theory, Piltdown Man and cold fusion (but not the butt-head astronomer), more than one claim of inducing pluripotency in somatic stem cells, and countless others past and present show that even today, science-as-practiced often falls far short of science-as-idealized.

Oftentimes, this doesn't result in much trouble, because even when review and scrutiny don't happen, most scient

I'm not claiming my belief in God is logical, for the record. My belief in God is separate and apart from logic. It's a difficult area, to be sure. Even now as I think about it, I wonder at the huge gap between what little I can comprehend and what can be proven scientifically. Maybe you're right, and my lizard brain (haha) substitutes God for things I don't understand. But, and this is a big BUT, I don't use God as an excuse to stop trying to understand via science. Science is just a means to understanding

Yes. I was raised in a typical Catholic environment, and was taught implicitly that homosexuality was wrong. As I grew up I learned the complexities of gender, and the possible mismatch of phenotype and genotype, among other issues such as brain development and hormonal issues. I now still consider myself Christian, and I embrace homosexuals without reservation, and consider homosexual marriage appropriate and holy, as well as support the rights of homosexuals to adopt, etc.

I really liked Mims's electronics books, but I can't respect him as a scientist when he misrepresents the theory of evolution and proposes (essentially) intelligent design instead.

Personally, I have no problem respecting Mims' contributions as a scientist. There isn't a single scientist or engineer on earth who doesn't have some blind spots in his philosophical and political worldview. No matter how smart or accomplished someone may be, I guarantee that if you talk to them long enough, he or she will rev

I really liked Mims's electronics books, but I can't respect him as a scientist when he misrepresents the theory of evolution and proposes (essentially) intelligent design instead. It's a damn shame.

I'd argue that you can still respect him as a scientist. Most scientists get things wrong - it doesn't negate their other accomplishments. Linus Pauling thought that most diseases, including cancer, could be cured through Vitamin C supplements (it apparently didn't work as he died of cancer.) Tesla discounted the theory of Relativity and bought into Aetherism for decades after the former was widely accepted and the latter was completely disproved.

I am particularly opposed to those who spout pseudo-scientific arguments against evolution because promoting ignorance is very dangerous, especially in a country like the United States where a significant fraction of the population is scientifically illiterate.

Mims chose to answer the question about evolution. So it's certainly relevant to the situation.

He already said that there is missing evidence (as cited by Darwin) to which there still is no answer.

Mims is wrong. I posted the names of a couple of books that completely refute Mims; please go and read them. I refer to "Why Evolution is True" by Jerry Coyne and "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins.

While I 100% agree most of what passes for modern religion is the "opium of the masses" by peddling Heaven Insurance, by labeling it only as an incorrect fallacy you are throwing the baby out with the bath water.

No one gives a shit if parables were actually truth IF they learn the lesson.

You only have belief because you have zero knowledge. You make assumptions what the true purpose of religion is. Religion before it was hijacked was supposed to be help people understand their true nature. By ex

As Albert Einstein said: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

You should try reading the article where that quote comes from. Einstein completely rejected the idea of a Christian god or of any personal god. He was speaking of a more general, higher-level religion more in line with Buddhism, or as Einstein called it, "cosmic religious feeling":

"In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of

You DO realize there is a difference between Darwinism and Evolution right???

Richard Dawkins is your typical fundamental atheist, aka idiot, who doesn't grok the meta-physical nature of reality. Namely, 1) Where the physical laws come from, 2) Why they exist, 3) let alone anything about consciousness. He doesn't understand life because he doesn't have a clue about death. He is the literal blind man saying there is no such thing as color. He doesn't understand the Source / God / Creator because he has com

Show me where Darwinism OR Evolution explains where consciousness comes from?

Consciousness is an adaptive evolutionary change. Conscious creatures survive better than non-conscious ones, evidently, hence consciousness evolved through natural selection. As to why the conditions that evolved consciousness exist, it just happened that things worked out that way. Sometimes things really do happen for no reason. Despite the fact that you might not like that, the Universe really does not care.

In my opinion, religion by definition is immoral since it presupposes to know what an ultimate creator wants, and inevitably ends up meting out the most despicable cruelties on those who reject the religion. You can't argue with the word of the ultimate creator, after all.

That's a broad generalization that isn't true across the board. Buddhism is a great example of a religion that has been consistently peaceful and inward-looking for the bulk of its recorded history. Christianity has as many implementations as practitioners, some evil, some saintly. Practitioners of man religions take a sincere and humble approach to knowing "Truth" that involves self-inspection and respect for others.

There are many ways to practice religion which are compatible with peaceful coexistence w

In my opinion, religion by definition is immoral since it presupposes to know what an ultimate creator wants, and inevitably ends up meting out the most despicable cruelties on those who reject the religion. You can't argue with the word of the ultimate creator, after all.

Interesting that secular communist and socialist governments killed more of their own citizens by murder and gross mismanagement than people who died as a result of all religious wars, ever, in all of human history, yet you identify religion as a force of the most despicable cruelties.

Lastly show me where Darwinism OR Evolution explains where the natural laws come from?

I don't believe the theory of evolution claims to explain that. Explaining how the laws of the universe arose is in the realm of cosmology, not biology, and we have only tentative scientific theories at this point.

However, religion does not explain anything. It doesn't make testable predictions the way science does. You say there was a creator? I say no, there were seventeen creators and a hundred and fifty-three

And a theoretical nuclear physicist is more qualified than biologists like Coyle and Dawkins to write about evolution because... ?

That's a veiled ad hominum argument - a logical fallacy. Just like you have asserted that someone should read Coyle and Dawkins, you in turn might consider setting an example by examining the arguments of Dr. Goswami.

FWIW, I haven't read any of these references, but I have read extensively on all sides of the argument including evolutionary biologists, intelligent design proponents and other non-standard models for what we observe. I've read other Dawkins books and found them to be just as weak as many of

No, not at all. I'm genuinely curious as to why the OP thinks the opinions of a nuclear physicist are particularly germane when it comes to discussing biology. I assume we wouldn't expect an entomologist to pontificate about neutrinos...

As far as I can tell, it's all still philosophy, and the science that we have, namely molecular biology, breeding and the fossil record do not show evolution as the conclusive final word on how life works.

I suppose you could get information about evolution from Time Magazine, but there's this thing, called "The Internet", which allows you to get your information directly from an evolutionary biologist - you know, someone who actually knows what he's talking about: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/23/the-encode-delusion/ [freethoughtblogs.com]

As a mystic you don't know what you're talking about: Both Theism (albeit Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) and Creationism are pseudo religions. They tend to have the opposite effects -- drive people away from God then bring them closer -- because they are in the business of selling Heaven Insurance. Furthermore I never said anything about New Age - it has its own set of problems.

The experience of the Source / Creator / God is available to _everyone_ IF they would first take the time to Know Thyself.

Open-mindedness is often a virtue. It's fine to be open-minded about other people's cultures, what they do for fun, what they enjoy as entertainment, how they choose to organize their cities, etc. It's pretty stupid to be open-minded about trying to decide whether or not 2+2=4 or 2+2=5, or whether the fact of evolution through natural selection is true or false.

We have witnessed natural selection in action even within the lifespan of a human

Evolution is about as close to an established fact as anything in biology. So yes... someone who calls him or herself a scientist and then rejects evolution is not someone I can respect, any more than I'd respect a "scientist" who says the Earth is flat or that the Sun orbits the Earth or that the Earth is less than 6000 years old.

Disbelieving in evolution is not blasphemy; it's simply a complete rejection of the scientific method, and yes... I cannot respect a scientist who does that.

OK. Evolution is not"random". Evolution happens through natural selection which is about the least random process you can imagine. The mechanism for organisms to change is in fact random mutation, but by far the majority of mutations are either neutral or non-adaptive and die out. So those few random mutations that are adaptive survive and propagate. This may, to people like Mims, make them seem magical, but to most biologists they're just common sense.

Mims writes: "The evolution of these complex molecules, which had to exist in the earliest cells, is so improbable..."

Um, no, it's not. If enough random things happen and the beneficial things survive, then not only is the evolution not improbable, it's almost inevitable given enough time. Mims is intelligent enough to write a simulation tool to prove this for himself.

Sorry for harping on the topic, but pseudo-science is dangerous. It's all the more dangerous when an otherwise intelligent scientist or engineer subscribes to it.

I agree with your general inputs and conclusions. However, I think that Mims is correct, in a sense.

"The evolution of these complex molecules, which had to exist in the earliest cells, is so improbable..." --Mims

Yes, it is improbable, on a small-scale, and that seems to be where Mims' analysis has stopped.

"If enough random things happen and the beneficial things survive, then not only is the evolution not improbable, it's almost inevitable given enough time." --parent

Yes indeed.

I found Mims' statement that he has "built thousands of circuits, none of which were made by randomly wiring together components" very telling. If he were to wire billions of circuits by randomly wiring together components, then he might end up with a few that were useful.

I'm having a hard time reconciling his beliefs with his electronic achievements. This is not meant as a slam.

If he were to wire billions of circuits by randomly wiring together components, then he might end up with a few that were useful.

There are people who did exactly that [hackaday.com] with simulators and FPGAs. Some of these circuits have peculiar properties like being very sensitive to the substrate they're working on, and I got the overall impression that they're sort of messy and "un-designed-like", just like living organisms, as opposed to engineered machines.

I found Mims' statement that he has "built thousands of circuits, none of which were made by randomly wiring together components" very telling. If he were to wire billions of circuits by randomly wiring together components, then he might end up with a few that were useful.

That experiment was also done. Doing it in hardware turned out to give a lot of unexpected side effects, such as not being able to remove a "dead" circuit, as it's effect on capacitance and cross talk having a real effect after all.

So in order to address this they instead tried simulation of passive analogue filters (obvious fitness function and you can control which building blocks that "nature" gets to play with) and matched against the patent data base. It turns out that you indeed end up with a lot of d

" But hardline atheists have no choice but to resist any alternatives to evolution"

False and backwards.Bible literalist have no choice then to deny the theory of evolution regardless of evidence.

You supply a better interpretation of the data that can be falsified? then Athiest will drop the modern version of evolution.

And it's not Darwinism, it's the theory of evolution. Only people who are unable to accept the fact that new data can chanfg a theory understand that. ANYONE who calls the theory of evolution 'darwinism' does so solely to create an ad hom attack and show they are unable to look at data.,

" But hardline atheists have no choice but to resist any alternatives to evolution"

False and backwards.
Bible literalist have no choice then to deny the theory of evolution regardless of evidence.

Actually, I think you're both right limited to those two statements. But you make reference only to bible literalists. Many religious people do not believe in literal interpretation. The Catholic church certainly doesn't take the creation story literally; nor would the Lutherans, or most of the protestants. For these and many others, there is no conflict between science and religion. I don't think that for Atheists, who don't have a sliding scale of "how much they believe in supernatural processes", that th

Since no resister in electronics if 100% they vale stated, clearly ohms law is invalid.How can you have a law when there is any uncertainty?How can you have a theory of electronics if not all things are known and perfect all the time?

I have built a lot of circuits, and not on every turned into an iPhone, so clearly the theory of electronics is wrong.herp derp

I made the conscious decision to reject Darwinian evolution in favor of what is now called intelligent design.

Scientists don't - or ideally shouldn't - make conscious decisions to reject things. They do so when the scientific method leads them to do so, because it's the valid thing to do in face of the evidence.

Do they really believe that a rotary nanomotor that spins an axle at a thousand or so rpm and can stop in only a revolution—all at an efficiency approaching 100 percent—somehow randomly arose from a cluster of molecules hanging out in a protocell?

Yes.

Do they really believe these motors can walk, slide and rotate while performing many functions absolutely essential to the life of a cell—all without a nervous system, brain, eyes or muscles?

Yes.

This guy sure asks a lot of obvious questions.

have a look at some of their videos on YouTube and start asking questions

Yeah, that's the best place to learn the science of evolution...

You will immediately realize why molecular biologists avoid discussing the supposed evolution of these nanomachines.

we all could be having, if Mr Mims had simply not answered one of those particular questions.

As someone who doesn't believe in god, and believes evolution explains our current Earthly biosphere, you guys who are hammering Mims for his views on evolution are sounding like school kids mocking the kid who's different. You can't accept that someone that is so close to your accepted template of an educated scientist has this differing viewpoint. You guys are practically frothing at the mouth over this.

Get over yourselves. You don't have to agree with the man on every item of his personal belief system, just as I don't have to agree with every item of yours. That is what discussion of views is about.

No. Discussion of views is talking about politics or economic theory in a respectful way in which multiple opinions can legitimately be defended.

Mims is promoting religious fantasy instead of scientific fact. This is very dangerous given the level of scientific illiteracy in his country and therefore his statements need to be rebutted at every opportunity to limit the spread of ignorance.

Thanks for the response Mike. That's how I look at my beliefs as well; can they be challenged intelligently and logically, and are they the same afterwards? I often find my beliefs being modified by these sorts of discussions. It seems some here can't afford to allow that possibility, even for others. Yet they proclaim science is their justification.

Or at least I remember having is "Engineer's Notebook" with all the cool stuff about a whole pile of different ICs (back when I was interested in electronics). I even came up with a few ideas (that never went anywhere) like building a set of "traffic lights" for a really really busy staircase at school using various logic gates and chips and stuff (this was in the days when "adding a microprocessor to a circuit" meant using a 4MHz Z80, some sort of programmable ROM chip and a super-expensive and hard-to-use

"Todayâ(TM)s strict evolutionists are unhappy about Darwinâ(TM)s views, for even today he would be unable to provide a satisfactory explanation"

Pretty much everything he says about evolution is wrong, and this is utterly wrong, particularly with regard to the "transition fossils" question it seems to be referring to. There are plenty of transition fossils. It's simply not an issue any more.

Darwinian theory predicted that there would be transition fossils. In Darwin's day transition fossils had not